The Teacher Service Commission, TSC, is silently deploying practicing PTE teachers to secondary schools thus creating confusion among primary teachers looking forward to promotion.
This week, Nairobi County got five deployment letters and Nakuru county two with Kiambu, Kilifi, Makueni, Kajiado, and Embu each getting three, raising eyebrows at the snail’s pace in the exercise. Some of the deployment letters arrived at the counties together with the appointment letters for new teachers.
According to sources, TSC has generated a merit list from the previous applications which it uses to deploy the PTE teachers to secondary schools. TSC uses deployment as a form of promotion for primary school teachers who have furthered their studies.
TSC advertised 1,000 deployment posts in 2019 and another 1,000 in September 2022. TSC advertised 1,000 more slots for deployment last year. Hoverer, TSC has not advertised for deployment posts this year but has continued to release deployment letters, although, few to some counties.
Despite stopping the automatic promotion of teachers who upgraded their certificates in January 2014, TSC still deploys 1000 PTE teachers each year to teach in secondary schools. A total of 3,000 P1 graduate teachers were promoted to teach in secondary schools in the last three years.
On 13th July 2022, TSC was engaged in talks with officials of the Kenya National Union of Teachers, KNUT. Led by its secretary general, Collins Oyuu, he was pushing TSC to allow primary school teachers who acquired higher academic qualifications through in-service training to teach in junior secondary.
KNUT specifically wanted TS to allow primary school teachers with degrees in secondary options but C plain in KCSE to be promoted to teach in those schools. They also wanted TSC to recognize teachers with diplomas in secondary options during deployment exercises.
According to TSC, for teachers to be deployed to teach in junior secondary school, one must have;
- A Kenyan citizen
- Be a holder of a P1 certificate
- Be a holder of a bachelor’s degree in education with two teaching subjects
- Must have attained at least a c plus mean grade at KCSE or its equivalent C plus in the two teaching subjects
- Must be serving under TSC
